It Is Among These Mountains In The New State Of
Colorado That The Sick Man May Find, Not Merely An Alleviation Of
His Ailments, But The Possibility Of An Active Life And An Honest
Livelihood.
There, no longer as a lounger in a plaid, but as a
working farmer, sweating at his work, he may prolong and begin anew
his life.
Instead of the bath-chair, the spade; instead of the
regulated walk, rough journeys in the forest, and the pure, rare
air of the open mountains for the miasma of the sick-room - these
are the changes offered him, with what promise of pleasure and of
self-respect, with what a revolution in all his hopes and terrors,
none but an invalid can know. Resignation, the cowardice that apes
a kind of courage and that lives in the very air of health resorts,
is cast aside at a breath of such a prospect. The man can open the
door; he can be up and doing; he can be a kind of a man after all
and not merely an invalid.
But it is a far cry to the Rocky Mountains. We cannot all of us go
farming in Colorado; and there is yet a middle term, which combines
the medical benefits of the new system with the moral drawbacks of
the old. Again the invalid has to lie aside from life and its
wholesome duties; again he has to be an idler among idlers; but
this time at a great altitude, far among the mountains, with the
snow piled before his door and the frost flowers every morning on
his window. The mere fact is tonic to his nerves. His choice of a
place of wintering has somehow to his own eyes the air of an act of
bold contract; and, since he has wilfully sought low temperatures,
he is not so apt to shudder at a touch of chill. He came for that,
he looked for it, and he throws it from him with the thought.
A long straight reach of valley, wall-like mountains upon either
hand that rise higher and higher and shoot up new summits the
higher you climb; a few noble peaks seen even from the valley; a
village of hotels; a world of black and white - black pine-woods,
clinging to the sides of the valley, and white snow flouring it,
and papering it between the pine-woods, and covering all the
mountains with a dazzling curd; add a few score invalids marching
to and fro upon the snowy road, or skating on the ice-rinks,
possibly to music, or sitting under sunshades by the door of the
hotel - and you have the larger features of a mountain sanatorium.
A certain furious river runs curving down the valley; its pace
never varies, it has not a pool for as far as you can follow it;
and its unchanging, senseless hurry is strangely tedious to
witness. It is a river that a man could grow to hate.
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